Insights

I’ve helped a handful of agencies to reposition themselves in the last few months and one question has been pretty consistent: should we say we’re “AI-enabled” (or “AI-first” or “AI-powered” or some variation)?

This isn’t an article on whether you should make redundancies (which is something I talk about with clients when necessary); it’s about passing on lessons I’ve learned from 3 redundancy processes that I’ve seen first hand.

I generally avoid telling any of my clients that they have to do anything and, since someone says “I know I should be more active on LinkedIn” to me about once a week, agency leaders’ presence on social media is the topic of this week’s article.

I’m continuing my series of articles about getting out of the day-to-day by sharing four things I personally did at Rise at Seven, plus one more that anyone can do, if you don’t feel like you can go all in like I did.

Last week I shared what I think agencies can expect from the market going into 2026. This second week in January I’m talking about the second most important thing: what you do at the agency.

It’s my first day working after a Christmas break, so I’m summarising various conversations I’ve had with agencies and brands throughout Q4 2025 (and the odd message exchanged in the past 2 weeks).

Nobody likes contract negotiations (except me). You’re trying to set the tone for the relationship and the last thing you feel like you need is an argument over the fine print in the contract.

More and more agencies are creating new “tracks” for staff who don’t want to (or can’t) manage people. If agencyland reframed the concept of “manager” as “someone who gets results out of other people”, rather than “someone who helps other people with their workloads”, we’d see this trend as more problematic.

Most agencies I've worked with offer some kind of incentive to staff for introducing new business. Some of the team might almost double their salaries with the commissions you might be offering, so why does nobody ever refers their mates to the business development manager?

We're starting to think about our end of year updates to our whole businesses, so let's explore what should be included in that presentation.